How to Write the Great American Football Novel

All of the football players must have chiseled features: chiseled chins, chests and hands.

Their chiseled chins and chests must be accentuated by tight t-shirts and suggestive poses.

The players must be as white as their perfect teeth, with blonde hair and blue eyes, preferably from two loving parents, warm with support. Each player should be filled with motivation

that their exceptional coach inspires them by drilling them hard and caring about them as people.

All the players should be over six feet tall and popular in school, with parents that love them.

The quarterback of the team should be the most popular guy in school, preferably the senior class president. He should date the most attractive girl in school. She should be the head cheerleader.

If she is not the head cheerleader, then she should be a gymnast or ballerina. She should be tall and thin, but curvy. She should be seductive, classy and come to every game to cheer for him.

All of her closest friends should fall for the first string football stars and should go on dates in groups. All of the couples should sit in one group and never go to class. This is mandatory.

If she is not the head cheerleader, then she should be a nerdy girl who pines after the quarterback. She must be made-over to look like the head cheerleader and then they will

live happily ever after. He will see her personality first, but then be floored by her looks.

Everyone will magically accept them and include them in all of the required events, like prom.

All of the football players will have straight A’s in the classroom and be used as examples by the administration of model students. If they are not exemplar students, their inspirational coach will

tutor them personally until they can pass all of their classes. Each player will then apply to an Ivy League or Big 10 school to continue to play. Everyone must know the name of the college.

The team must be the best football team in the state and assert their dominance at every game.

The entire school must come and cheer for them every game and praise them for their spirit.

If they are not the best, then they are the underdog team. They must consist of motley good-looking players who the inspirational coach leads to greatness and the highest victory.

It is essential that the quarterback fight with his girlfriend, sleep with his girlfriend, and make-up with his girlfriend after the big win at the end of the season. Every party must be attended.

In the Great American Football Novel, when it is finally written,
all of the football players will be inspirational and everyone will forget.

The author of this work, Andrea Johnson, attends Kalamazoo College, MI and studies English Literature and Women, Gender and Sexuality. She is currently a junior studying abroad in Germany. This poem was written in an Introduction to Creative Writing class and is inspired by Sherman Alexis’s “How to Write the Great American Indian Novel”.